Yea I don't understand anyone voting yes for that guy. No amount of voter calculus 2 years from now excuses that.

Manchin voted against DeVos

voted against Tom Price too

Einbert is very I remember my first beer itt. Get it together: Manchin is a huge value-add for the left, Sessions was never in doubt and it buys Manchin 2018 credibility.

For me the line is when he is faced with a primary opponent that is more likely to hold the Senate seat. Any Democrat who can win in West Virginia should be supported imo.

I haven't looked at Manchin's legislation here in detail, but opioid abuse has been a focus of his legislation for a few years now.

Jeff Sessions was obviously unwinnable. West Virginia is 94% non-Latino white, and as mentioned voted for Trump by a ridic margin. I think it's fair to say that "I made a meaningless protest vote against your guy's nominee to show solidarity with Dems who accused him of racism" is a losing argument for his base.

I think the line is voting for Paul Ryan stuff, which should be safe for him to reject. Manchin won by a pretty big margin in 2012, but idk, he may be screwed anyway. I expect Trump to campaign bigly for the R's in 2018, probably against their wishes, just simply because he likes the crowds. If he's still popular in West Virginia, pretty sure McConnell will tell him to make a big show of embarrassing Manchin.

Einbert, if your republican senators had Manchin's voting record, everyone in this thread would be ecstatic.

a total nutcase is pres and dems still are gonna have a hard time regaining lost ground and there's a fair # of D sens in heavy trump/R states that are going to be fights to hold along with MN seemingly turning red. What a world.

Good point.

Thought I was the only person who realized this. Lost in all the election night chaos was that Trump's Midwest and Rust Belt message apparently extended to Minnesota as well; HRC 45K votes/1.5% margin of victory in 2016, a far cry from 226K/7.7% in 2012 and 293K/10.3% in '08. Clearly trending in a direction Dems can't like one bit. Klobuchar should be safe in 2018 but beyond that, ugh.

In Minnesota Bernie won by 23% over Clinton. From the looks of 2012-2016 Clinton had difficulty turning out Dems. Trump got almost the same amount of votes as Romney did. Libertarian got 90k more than in 2012. Overall Clinton did 200k worse than Obama in 2012. Turning out the base def appears to have been an issue there.

insert nytimes map of arrows here

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...l?ref=politics

I think the arrows map is a poor explainer because it fails to differentiate between areas becoming more conservative vs. blue voters that showed up in 2008 failing to show up now.

I tried to visualize that distinction a little in this post and this post but I'm just an amateur at this stuff and I don't think I did that great. But like, the comment in the first of those posts I made about the Wisconsin map - holy crap, it's so red, but then it turns out that Trump got basically the same number of votes in Wisconsin in 2016 that Romney did in 2012 - also describes my problem with the arrows map.

Has he voted for a nominee as the deciding vote yet? Not to my knowledge. He voted against DeVos.

If he's not the swing vote and he needs to play politics in order to hold the seat, he should be doing so... And Democrats need to let him off the hook for it.

Now, if he is the swing vote and doesn't get in line, that's a different story. If he doesn't hold strong on the ACA, that's a different story.

Here's how important Manchin's seat is... The Republicans have a 52-48 advantage in the Senate. The Democrats are defending 10 seats in states where Trump won, the Republicans are defending only one seat in a state Clinton won. Chances are, once the races are set up, Republicans will have a chance to steal ~5 Democrat seats... Democrats could steal 2 (AZ and NV). If the Democrats could hold and steal both, it'd be 50-50 and they'd only need to flip one Republican on any issue with a couple moderates available. If they lose Manchin's that's impossible...

Looking toward the future, they need to be at 49 or 50 to have any shot at a super majority after 2022...

So, right now it may look like just one seat, but when you start to game out scenarios, it's a seat they really need to hang on to.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...045cd34bff1dd?

hanging onto the manchin seat, or any of the others, will imo require a bold message to rally the base. trying to keep seats (d) just to keep seats (d) is super risky. trump will be campaigning hard for republicans in 2018, so the democrats will need a message real enough to counter.

(what seems to be) the current party leadership strategy of just hoping trump will **** **** up so bad that people will default vote (d) in 2018 not only plays right into his tiny hands but also allows him to hammer any obstructionism and democratic inefficiencies on the future campaign stump.

now i don't know much about west virginia politics (so maybe i'm off base here), but looking at the situation from a national perspective it just seems to me that center-right guys like manchin are going to be real easy marks for trump and the republicans to pick off in two years.

I don't see it that way - like, I don't think the Dems need to run as a bloc for the House or Senate... Guys like Manchin are better off on their own somewhat, and he's really running there on name recognition and experience and a "maverick," type streak bucking his party.

The key is, if they're in the party, you can hold their feet to the fire on the important votes after they win through any number of ways.

The Democrats have a huge disadvantage in the Senate since population is not accounted for, so being able to hold some seats in red states is imperative and you simply can't win there as a strong progressive.

WV can also be deceptive because so many people there are registered Dems, but a lot of them are old blue collar union people who have been voting Republican for a while and never changed their party registration.

One thing that would help the democratic party a lot going forward would be if they stop repeating the gender wage gap myth that does not exist, which might have cost Hilary the election as it was one of her focal points that turned off a lot of people:

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-...radio-podcast/

Cliffs: There might be a slight wage gap, such as 3-5%, but most of that can probably be corrected by teaching women to negotiate better as currently they are more likely tot just accept the first offer. All the women (and men) that have countered the first offer in my company have received an increased salary. Anyone who says women make 76-77% of men with all else being equal is flat out wrong.

Having Hilary say equal pay for equal work when most of the working nation knows that already exists is not a message most can get behind.

lol I'm sure this was the big deal breaker in the Rust Belt.

HEAR YE, HEAR YE. Fellow countrymen, I say to you that Hillary Clinton is not accurate enough with statistics! We must now cast our votes for the one who claims the unemployment rate is 42%.

It was definitely part of it, and considering how close she lost the rust belt I would suggest you check your smugness!

If I was in charge of the DNC you would not lose a presidential election again, but based on the way you guys are acting, you are bound to.

Yup. If there's one thing trump supporters care deeply about it's slight distortions of established facts for dramatic or hyperbolic effect. They can't stand that ****...

I'm not even sure what this means. I'm talking about swing votes in key states that can be influenced. Are you saying women only make 77% of men? Because if you do, you are part of the problem that made Trump happen!

If you want to say the Rust Belt was close and this could have been the deal breaker, there are literally dozens if not hundreds of things that should be listed before her use of this misleading statistic.

By the way, can you cite when she said it on the campaign? Because I don't recall. I know Obama said it a while back, but I don't recall her saying it.

clinton played terrible with white, working class men especially. hiding some of the women stuff and pushing the minority issues into the background seems like a way to do better next time. that might not make you feel great, but you need to win elections.

also just lie. go full economic populist and promise everyone everything. it's not going to hurt you.

I think any woman candidate will play terribly with white working class men (especially the religious ones). But I agree with the overall point, that basically your message can't be "we're gonna help the blacks and poors, and we'll all help each other, and it'll be great. Stronger together." Like you gotta be promising some stuff for them specifically. DJT promised these people their dignity back on a silver platter, and HRC was like "we're gonna retrain you for the modern world." In these terms, their choice is not surprising.